I am in a really great mood today. And, frankly, I am in it because of homeopathy, which has spurred me on to post this.

You see, a few years ago, I began to develop arthritis. Like millions of other people my age—in their middle years—I find that each new decade brings new health challenges. And, sadly, I also find that the healing process is getting longer the older I get.

I have, over the years, developed issues with arthritis in most of the joints in my body. Happily, with treatment—I tend to favor homeopathy and acupuncture as the two modes of treatment that work best for me—I am free of pain and restriction most of the time, which is great. I am neither dependent upon painkillers, nor do I have to ask for steroids in order to function, so, most of the time, I have no complaints.

Recently, however, I have been complaining plenty. Because the arthritis finally discovered that I have knees.

Up to now, I have bragged that I have no pain whatsoever in my knees, that I am free to bend, reach, stretch as much as I want. Then one day, that ended. A few days ago, left knee swelled up to the size and color of a ruby red grapefruit and felt as if someone had, overnight while I slept, attached a car clamp to the joint. As my knee was immobilized, I was pretty much immobilized and could only get up off my bed with the help of a cane, huffy breathing and a gallon or two of pure willpower.

I began receiving acupuncture treatments for my pain and found some immediate relief and soon found that I could move my knee a little as well. But the recovery was slow and I found that I was burning time, since, despite their names, laptops do not really work very well when placed upon the lap. Most days because a blur of video games on my iPad, books that I am reading to review and reruns of Judge Judy, which signal the end of yet another workday and the onset of the evening news…

But, to the point—and the point is homeopathy. Once again I have been reminded of just how exquisite a thing homeopathic medicine is and of the fact that, when you are healed as a result of homeopathic treatment you are healed indeed.

Last night, having had a rather bad day in which my attitude had been colored the pain, I decided to take a homeopathic remedy in spite of the fact that I had had acupuncture recently. Now, as a rule, I will never combine the two of them, as I consider them too similar in their impact upon the body to blend. They are, after all, both forms of energy medicine, and work by breaking through blockages in the Vital Force and bringing about a state of balance in the whole system.

But, when you are in pain and there is no one watching, you tend to give things a try. So I took a dose of a homeopathic medicine I had on hand and, blessedly, I woke this morning with a totally normal and pain-free knee.

This experience reminds me of every other one like it that I have personally experienced or witnessed over these last three decades. What to me is so amazing, so profound about the way the homeopathy works is the simplicity of it. The fact that, in many ways, the process of a homeopathic “cure” is a non-event.

I took the remedy last night before I went to sleep. I did not feel anything as a result of taking it. I was not numbed or put to sleep, I was not made nauseous, nor did I have labored breathing or any other side effect of the sort that you hear listed at the end of every television commercial for allopathic medicine. No, I just felt…nothing. As I say, it was a non-event.

But the results—they’re something totally different. Because the remedy works with the symptoms and not against them, it served to help my body in its own healing process, in working with the inflammation and pain and pushing it out of my body. The remedy did not mask or numb anything. Instead, it boosted my own healing process and assisted it in putting things right, in removing the inflammation from my body.

As a result, I woke this morning with no pain and with a fully functioning knee. When I woke, I got out of bed and had to stop and remember that I had been in pain and that I had had issues with the knee over the past few days.

No more walking as if from the Ministry of Funny Walks. No more cane. Just a knee that matches the other one, step by step, inch by inch.

Where do I go from here? Will I need another dose of the remedy? At this point I can’t say. I know enough to wait and see and, in the meantime, to do nothing. If the swelling or pain begin to re-occur, I will take another dose of my remedy. If not, I will not. I would be very happy and very willing to have this whole thing dealt with by a single dose, as that is a perfect example of homeopathy in action…